Project Haystack is creating standardised semantic data models and web services with the goal of making it easier to unlock value from the vast quantity of data being generated by smart buildings.Today’s automation systems, equipment, metering systems, smart devices and IoT applications produce tremendous amounts of data. This data can be very hard to organise and use across different applications because it is stored in many different formats and has inconsistent naming conventions and very limited data descriptors. In essence it lacks information to describe the meaning of the data, and without meaning a time-consuming manual effort is required before value creation can begin. Taking cues from other data intensive applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and others who utilise tags and semantic data models, the work developed by the Project Haystack community addresses this challenge by defining an easy to use methodology to describe the meaning of data. This enables software applications to automatically consume, analyze and present data from devices and equipment systems. Traditional information retrieval systems are designed to provide uniform access to centralised corpora (set of texts) by large numbers of people. The Haystack project emphasizes the relationship between a particular individual and his corpus. An individual’s own haystack privileges information with which that user interacts, gathers data about those interactions, and uses this metadata to further personalise the retrieval process. Current large-scale information retrieval systems are in many ways very similar to libraries: they manage massive corpora for anonymous individuals using a fixed organisational schema. Taxonomies (such as Yahoo) emulate the Dewey decimal system, and early search engines (such as Alta Vista) mimicked the library card catalogue system. However, in a library, a user cannot ask for “that fat book about building automation I skimmed through last month” and current information retrieval systems do not support queries like “the email about energy storage that I forwarded to James last week”. While a search for “apples” would yield the same results to a computer shopper as it would a farmer. A user who might remove certain search results will find them coming back again the next time he/she performs the same search. Libraries are vast, filled with masses of data irrelevant to any single query. They are impersonal, presenting every user with the same information regardless of their background and interests. The primary methods of improving these systems have focused on training the user, while the library itself does not adapt to the needs of individual patrons. In a traditional library, professional reference librarians lessen these problems, but in automated information retrieval systems no effective resource has existed, until recently.
For our “smart”, Internet of Things enabled world the open source Project Haystack has streamlined the interchange of data and the techniques for managing, presenting and analysing the vast amount of data generated by today’s smart devices, building and energy systems. Pragmatic use of naming conventions and taxonomies can make it more cost effective to analyse, visualise, and derive value from our operational data.Project Haystack encompasses the entire value chain of building systems and related intelligent devices. Owners and consultants can specify that Haystack conventions be used in their building automation systems to ensure cost effective analytics and management of their buildings for years to come. System integrators and manufacturers who integrate Haystack support into their projects and products are positioned for the future of value added services. Memoori’s FREE webinar on July 22nd will discuss how Project Haystack works, and how it will improve Smart Buildings. Participants will understand how to unlock value from the vast quantity of data being generated by the smart devices that permeate our homes, buildings, factories and cities. To get more information and Sign Up for the Webinar, click here - http://memoori.com/webinar-project-haystack-working-data-internet-things/